Best version of linux

[pegasis]

what is the preferred distro for linux for;

plug and play and
user friendly,
and porting windows apps to linux?

 

[TuSpockShakur]

Mint

 

[MrColin]

Mint

Yup.

 

[jhu]

Android

 

[FrankRamiro]

Android

Jhu;you're Kidding?

 

[Shamrock]

Mepis, but there hasn't been a new release in a while. It's been on 11 since 2012.

 

[matszpk]

OpenSUSE and gentoo linux (that still is working on very old machine ).

 

[mrblotto]

I'm partial to Zorin atm.........

 

[Berliner]

I still like Ubuntu and find it simple to use.

 

[theevilsharpie]

If you're looking to develop apps for Linux, you should target Debian and Fedora, as these are the upstream distros for most of the major Linux distributions.

 

[nxiety]

Arch Linux. Takes a little bit more work but it's worth it. Package manager and the AUR make it worthwhile.

 

[Scarpozzi]

I'm enjoying Xubuntu....I'm running 13.10 and 14.04.

I may try Mint again one of these days. I'm just not big on the out of the box Ubuntu and Unity and like XFCE better.

 

[3spooky5u]

I use Slackware, but try Salix. It's Slackware for slackers.

 

[SunburstLP]

I'd say Mint or Elementary. I love Ubuntu as much as the next guy, but Mint does do a few things a bit better. I run eOS on my chromebook through crouton and I quite like it.

If you're completely new to the *nix world, I'd stick with a Debian or Arch based distro. (I know Arch sounds crazy, hear me out.) The online documentation for those two ecosystems is mind-boggling. I use the Arch wiki on a regular basis and I'm a *buntu dude.

Best of luck.

 

[Tauren]

If you want availability of apps and newb friendly: go for one of the *buntus

 

[narzy]

for what you said you want I'd suggest Linux Mint 17 “Qiana” Cinnamon. Debian based fork of ubuntu that is focused on being clean, easy to use user friendly and up to date. with restricted packages already enabled.

Your question in general is about as loaded as asking what kind of wine you should buy. It depends on your taste and how you're going to use it.

 

[ControlD]

On newer hardware I have found straight up Debian to be the best solution so far. Both Mint and Ubuntu seem to have major driver issues with both video and sound hardware on my Haswell based system while Debian gets it right on the initial install. That is almost completely opposite of what I was expecting.

 

[sweenish]

Is Cinnamon just the UI? Is it supposed to be lightweight or what? They're lousy at simply saying "this is what this is." Same goes for MATE.

I almost went with Mint for my VM distro, but opted for LXLE for being lighter. It hasn't let me down. I might try Mint KDE to see what Okular is about. It wouldn't launch in LXLE, which makes me think apt-get didn't grab all the dependencies it needed, and I'm not going to bother trying to add repositories manually.

 

[pw257008]

cinnamon is not as lightweight as lxde, ut lighter than kde

 

[ControlD]

Is Cinnamon just the UI? Is it supposed to be lightweight or what? They're lousy at simply saying "this is what this is." Same goes for MATE.

Cinnamon is a desktop environment, so it is the UI as well as a large number of applications and tools. My understanding is that it is an effort to keep a more classic styled type of environment rather than going with something ultra modern like Unity (Ubuntu).

It is lighter than Unity and KDE but heavier than Mate. From my experience, if you are running Linux Mint then Cinnamon is the way to go because the bulk of the development is with that particular DE in mind.

 

[pegasis]

yep... explanations are scarce for those not in the know

seems the widgets doing the programming forget about the humans using the software

go figure

 

[sweenish]

cinnamon is not as lightweight as lxde, ut lighter than kde

Cinnamon is a desktop environment, so it is the UI as well as a large number of applications and tools. My understanding is that it is an effort to keep a more classic styled type of environment rather than going with something ultra modern like Unity (Ubuntu).

It is lighter than Unity and KDE but heavier than Mate. From my experience, if you are running Linux Mint then Cinnamon is the way to go because the bulk of the development is with that particular DE in mind.

Okay, thanks for the explanations. Like I figured, it wasn't difficult. They just need to put it somewhere that makes sense.

 

[positivedoppler]

I love Mint. Second is Lubuntu. For general purpose stuff none gaming, im much happier on mint than windows.

 

[LPCTech]

I have installed over 50 distros from distrowatch on Vmware and an old dell laptop. I am not very experienced with linux but I can use the command line and write a very simple shell script. The distros I have found to be the most user friendly and easy to install have been:

Mint cinnamon - Best overall by a mile and getting better
Ubuntu
Debian
OpenSUSE
CentOS
And LXLE is nice looking too.

I found certain other distros to be either hard to install, ugly, or buggy. And I cant seem to stand the KDE interface, redundant and childlike. Its ok on openSUSE but elsewhere ick. Just my personal opinion tho. Im partial to the debian/ubuntu based distros due to the wider compatibility and ease of use.

 

[HOSED]

For older hardware I still like Bodhi Linux . There is a very stable RC2 for 32 bit systems (it is based on Ubuntu 14.04) on sourceforge.I have been very impressed with PCLinuxOS on newer hardware, AFter a kernel update everything worked on the Sager in my signature